Fashion illustrator Antonio Lopez was a major part of my early career. Andy Warhol had asked me to work with him on a special Paris issue of Interview magazine in 1975 (which is also how Karl Lagerfeld and I became close friends). With Antonio, working on a fashion session was like a night out on the town. Disciplined and rigorous, he always had music on while a fabulous parade of people—Paloma Picasso, Pat Cleveland,Bill Cunningham—streamed in and out of his studio across from the Factory on Broadway. In Antonio Lopez: Fashion, Art, Sex & Disco, by brothers Roger and Mauricio Padilha, I share memories of Antonio and those late-night sessions in the studio of the great American couturier Charles James, whose skirts Lopez often drew on his creative director, Juan Ramos.

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Antonio’s energy explodes not only in his sense of line, but the idea of movement. The Trigere coat comes across as total dash and glamour. I can only imagine that he drew these in bursts of energy, like the bursts of loud, loud music in his atelier in sessions that would begin at noon with the fashion editor, stylist, hairdresser, and makeup artist. Antonio always worked with incredible models who were coiffed and made up as if they were going on set with a photographer.

Photo: Courtesy of Paul Caranicas

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Photo: Courtesy of Paul Caranicas

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This was one of my big center-of-book pieces. To watch Antonio draw Norma Kamali with her dachshund, Ernie, was a joy. I was so happy to go to Antonio’s studio after having worked so often with him at Anna Piaggi’s Vanity, which was published in Milan. I regret I didn’t keep every single issue of that collaboration; I also was the fashion editor for a special issue in which Antonio drew Paloma Picasso for the cover, in a fez with the longest plume that she had found in the basement of Madame Hélène Arpels (she also unearthed a brilliant pair of silver-lamé above-the-knee disco boots.) Paloma underwrote a great retrospective exhibition on her friend at the Musée de la Mode et du Textile in Paris in 1994.

Photo: Courtesy of Paul Caranicas

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There is nothing static in illustration, as the models move to the electric energy of his studio. The attitude was free and fun, but the working style was serious and disciplined. Juan Ramos—Antonio’s partner, his Diaghilev—was always in the corner, encouraging Antonio to keep his focus. Juan would add the colors after he, with Antonio, selected the drawings from piles and piles. I write about my collaboration with him in the introduction to Antonio Lopez: Fashion, Art, Sex, & Disco (Rizzoli, September 2012, with an epilogue by Anna Sui).

Photo: Courtesy of Paul Caranicas

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Photo: Courtesy of Paul Caranicas

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Antonio knew how to suggest the mood of the time—here there is a sense of the wildfire and over-the-top eighties style. Think Kim Basinger in these clothes. He takes the impact of color to a higher level. What might have been pedestrian—putting the Fendi shoulder bag on the big-shouldered dresses by Gianfranco Ferré and Mario Valentino (two major advertisers back then)—is arresting here. Red hair, red clothes, red accessories are skillfully placed in the frame.

Photo: Courtesy of Paul Caranicas

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How brilliant it was to send a Basile jacket down to Antonio to create elegance for a major advertiser. Antonio was a great commercial fashion illustrator who also influenced many fashion designers. His line and his aesthetic went beyond the final product. He was a catalyst; he is a legend. His best friend when he lived in Paris was Karl Lagerfeld. He drew Paloma Picasso, in a bra and panties and little bowed sandals for British Vogue. A retrospective of his work opens at the Suzanne Geiss Company in New York on September 7. I’ll be there, in a corner, remembering my great friend.